


One Narrow Bed

by ticknart



Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 02:16:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11152101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticknart/pseuds/ticknart
Summary: One night, Janna appears in Marco's bedroom.





	One Narrow Bed

Marco Diaz had just finished buttoning his striped pajama shirt when his bed squeaked. Darned laser puppies. He’d spent a half hour chasing them and throwing them out of his room. He was sure that he got them all. Although, he admitted to himself, one could have sneaked back in while he was tossing out another.

He psyched himself up, ready to be hit by several lasers. He pushed off and spun on his toe. He lunged forward, wanting to snatch the puppy before it could hide under the bed and he’d have to fight for his room again. He gasped in surprise. As his momentum continued moving him forward, his feet tangled together and he fell, smack, right on his face. There was no puppy on the bed. Instead he saw–

“Janna?” he said into the floor.

It couldn’t be her. Could it? No, it couldn’t. It must be a misfire from one of Star’s spells. Some nutty illusion spell that manifested in his room instead of hers. Or a psychic projections, maybe. With Star, who knew, her aim wasn’t always great. Once she’d accidentally hit him with her bumble bee battalion burst. He’d been standing, sort of, in between Star and a horde of monsters when she unleashed the bee army. Those little bugs chased him for what seemed like hours and never once moved to chase a monster. That had been one exciting afternoon and a bit of a painful night.

He heard the window slam shut. He sighed then rolled over onto his back. Above him were two big brown eyes and one gigantic, toothy smile. He forced a grin, but was pretty sure it was more of a grimace.

“Hey, Marco,” said Janna Orodonia, an old friend of his from way back and now a current friend of his housemate and best friend, Star Butterfly.

“Hi, Janna.”

Marco’s brain went into overdrive: What was she doing in his house? Why his room? His room! Why not Star’s room? His shirt was on, but had he remembered his pants? He hoped his pants were on. Was her being in his room at night appropriate? Did Star invite Janna over? Or did Janna invite Janna over? Was this another one of those times where Janna wanted to make him frustrated and flustered? He wouldn’t give her that satisfaction? Why was his face warm and flush? Hadn’t Janna been in his room lots of times? Yes, but that was during the day. With his door wide open. To keep his parents happy. His parents! What would they do if they found her in here? Would they ever trust him again? Would they send Star away? If Star was gone, would the monsters stop attacking? Would she take the puppies with her or would he be stuck caring for them forever? With that sort of responsibility, could he still go to college? Was fast food his only option if he didn’t go to college? Could Jackie love a man who had no prospects, no future? Could anyone? Could he? Would he be a drain on society?! What would his life become?!

“Stop it,” said Janna, offering her hand.

“Stop what?” he asked.

“Worrying,” she said, reaching lower.

He took her hand and she helped him up.

“I am not worrying.”

“Dude, you were born worrying.”

“Was not.”

She cocked her head and simply looked at him.

After a moment, he looked away from her and said, “I was… over thinking. Not worrying.”

She pulled the chair out from his desk and sat down.“How far’d you get?” she asked.

“Huh?” he said, sitting on his bed across from her.

“Remember when we were little? You’d start by worrying about the class hamster. ‘Does it really like the food pellets and if it doesn’t how can we know?’ Or something like that. Then you’d go step it up and eventually work your way to your future and worry about the day gerbils got smart and start their plan for world domination. How far’d you get?” she asked again.

Did he remember? Of course he remembered. Janna and Marco had been best friends from the moment they met – when Janna decided that he was going to be her friend – until middle school. She was someone who pulled him out of his shell and forced him into new experiences. (A lot like Star did now, without the magic or monsters or psychotic princess academies.) She also helped him work through his anxieties, mostly by telling him he was crazy and that the “future’ll be what the future’ll be.” He didn’t fully understand what she got from him until he was much older and they’d grown apart: stability and unconditional love.

“I was homeless,” he said, smiling weakly, “dragging around the laser dogs, who scared away anyone who tried to help us. Slowly dying from exposure. Expecting to be the dogs’ next, and maybe their final, meal.”

“Wow,” said Janna, cringing, “you went from zero to caa-razy really fast.” She waited for a bit before asking, “What started it?”

“Why are you here?!” asked Marco, too loudly to be polite. “I mean, it’s after” – he looked at the clock next to the head of his bed – “nine o'clock. Shouldn’t you be in your house, in your bedroom, getting ready to sleep?”

“Yeah, I gue–”

“But here you are, in my room, wearing that too small jacket and that beany I gave you, as a gift, when my parents took us to the snow. Forever ago.”

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and sat down. “I’m sorry. I just… I don’t understand. Why are you here, Janna?”

When she didn’t answer, he opened his eyes. She wasn’t smiling. There was no mischievous glint to her eyes. She looked tired and… sad? He hadn’t seen her like this for a long time. She’d been happy-go-lucky, trickster Janna for so long. She let everything roll off her back. She didn’t care what other’s thought. She was Janna!, with and exclamation mark, and no one could do anything about it. He’d forgotten that she was as human as he was.

She looked at him, sighed, and said, “I need a place to crash, Marco. For tonight.”

“Sure,” said Marco, without a single contrary thought. “Let’s just get you across the hall into Star’s room.” He knew his parents would be cool with Janna sleeping over with Star even if they weren’t asked.

“Thanks, but, nah, I’d rather sleep here.”

He didn’t think his parents would be cool about that. And he didn’t know if he was cool with it either. Just because all those nighttime shows that happened to take place at a high school showed that this kind of a moment was every boy’s dream at all times, didn’t mean it was true. Not that Marco would ever… No. NO! He wasn’t ready. He knew he wasn’t ready. But if she wanted to go really slo– NO! His imagination was a dangerous thing and he didn’t need it to interfere with his thoughts. Especially with his friend in the room. Especially in his pajama pants. This wasn’t a good idea.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea?” he asked, feeling like an idiot for talking that way. He quickly corrected himself, “It’s not a good idea.” Firm and to the point.

“Why?”

“W-well,” he stuttered, “it’s because, uh, you’re a boy and I’m a gi–” What did he just say? “No, it’s because I’m a gir–” GAH! “Darn-it, you know what I’m trying to say.”

“Yeah, but we used to do it all the time.”

This was true. Between the ages of six and eleven, Janna practically lived at his house. Almost every afternoon she’d walk home with him and they’d play and do homework until she left, sometimes that was after dinner, sometimes not. On weekends She’d spend the night and they’d build blanket forts to sleep in, or drag out his parents’ old sleeping bags to the back yard, or simply stay up late in his room reading stories to each other. One of his happiest memories was a whole Saturday where they barely said anything. They just played with his Legos. It’s not often you could be so quiet with someone and feel so close to them. So happy with them. When he got older, Marco was surprised that his parents let her spend so much time with him. At the time, though, he didn’t care. His best friend in the world practically lived with him. It was almost like having a really cool sister. But she wasn’t his sister.

“We were little kids!”

“So?”

“So!” Marco said, throwing his arms into the air.

“Yeah. So?”

“So, I think the only difference between us that I recognized was that you weren’t me.”

She smirked and said, “You knew some other things were different about us when we traded clothes.”

He felt himself blush and her smile grew wider. She was a slick one. Always an answer that made him feel awkward so he couldn’t think clearly.

“Maybe,” he said, choosing his next words carefully, “but to me it was more like the difference between you having black hair and me having brown hair. It was just one more thing that made you, you.”

“You know better now, though. You have the internet.”

“Of course I ha–” The back of his neck flushed and his faced burned hotter. She had no way of knowing anything. He was very safe on his phone. He cleared his browser history. She was just trying to fluster him again. Like always. And if he didn’t give in she’d spend who knows how long making him more and more uncomfortable.

He asked, “Will your parents be okay with this?”

“Pffft. They’ll be fine. You know my parents.”

Except, he didn’t know her parents. He wasn’t sure he’d ever met them. He could remember visiting Janna’s house once when they were nine, maybe ten, and he had been a little scared the whole stay.

Once upon a time, her house had been like every other house in the neighborhood, but at some point someone had given up taking care of it. A low chain-link fence with holes divided the yard from the sidewalk. Wires stuck out into the sidewalk, waiting to catch on someone’s clothes, or scratch an arm or leg. Old, rusting pieces of bikes and lawnmowers and who-knows-what were scattered on the patchy lawn. The driveway had four beat-up cars parked in it. Marco couldn’t tell by looking at them which ones ran and which didn’t, if any of them ran at all. The paint that caught the most sun had faded and was peeling. The rest was flaking off the house. Everywhere he looked at her house made him uncomfortable and a little sad.

He felt even worse when saw the inside. The entry was a mess of dried mud and random things that had been dragged in from outside. The walls had random holes and were lined with stuff: used paper plates, old shoes that were falling apart, chewed up bones, broken toys, and lots of things Marco couldn’t or didn’t want to identify. There were paths down the center of halls, but he had an eerie feeling that something could jump out of the stuff at any moment and grab him.

Older and younger kids darted around Janna and Marco as they walked. Too many too close to the same age to all be Janna’s brothers and sisters. Cousins, maybe? Marco didn’t ask. Since they first arrived at the house, Janna had a stiff smile on her face every time she looked at him. He thought that she must be as uncomfortable with him there as he was at being there. He wanted to tell her it was okay, but it wasn’t.

It wasn’t where someone like Janna should live and he knew it. She deserved to live in a place like his home, only better. She deserved a tree house and swimming pool. She deserved clean floors and a lawn. She deserved a place that made her feel warm and safe like she made him feel. This was not that place.

Her house, which was surprisingly big, seemed to wind back on itself. Was she giving him a tour, or was it like Ikea and they had to follow a path that would eventually lead them back to the front of the house? At one point they stopped at an open door. There was an old woman sitting in the dark on a lounge chair, watching TV, and drinking a beer. The air coming out of the room smelled stale, wet, and thick. The sounds from the television were of a language he couldn’t recognize. Janna went in to speak with the old women. They whispered, so all Marco heard were pieces of sound. Eventually, Janna kissed the old woman on the cheek and walked out the door. She had that same stiff smile as she walked past him.

She stopped in a part of a hall where a space had been marked off by a curtain. The curtain was lit up from behind. Small beams of sunlight came through holes in the curtain and spread over the dirty carpet. Janna took a deep breath and pulled him behind the curtain.

For a moment, Marco was blinded. He blinked away the light and got his first look at something in this house that was Janna’s. More than that, it was Janna. Clothes were scattered across the carpet, which didn’t look as grungy as the rest of the house. The tiny desk had a pile of library books; he immediately recognized several from the Plots to Petrify series, her current literary love. Above the desk were drawings of werewolves and skeletons and clowns all looking horrible. (Skeletons and clowns were always smiling, how could they be so scary?) Her bed sat on a series of drawers, the kind his parents used for crafts. The sea-foam green comforter was rumpled, probably the same as it was since she left for school. For the first time since they approached the house, Marco felt comfortable.

He smiled a genuine smile. Janna smiled, too. This one actually reached her eyes.

Marco sat on her bed and Janna at her desk. They did their homework together and talked about the most recent episodes of Quaking Quakers to the noise of the other kids and dogs running around the halls and out in the back yard. But they hardly heard anything except each other.

When the sun started setting and they could hear other voices, older voices, Janna led him out of the house. They walked in a more direct route to the door. She walked him to the nearest bus stop and waited with him. As the bus pulled up, she looked at her feet and quietly thanked him for coming. His instinct was to say that it was his pleasure, but it wouldn’t come out. He climbed on the bus with a simple your welcome and see you at school tomorrow.

The bus ride home was short, but it was also worlds away.

“You want some PJs to wear?” Marco asked, shaking off the memory. “I can get you some PJs. They’re in the dresser.”

“I’ll get 'em,” Janna said.

She darted around him and rooted through the drawers. His drawers. His shirts. His pants. His socks. His underwear!

Why did he get so embarrassed over underwear? Most of them were in good condition. No holes where holes weren’t supposed to be. Besides, she knew he wore underwear, just like she wore underwear… probably.

Marco shook that thought out of his head.

“I think,” said Janna, “I’ll wear these shiny shorts and this shirt.”

She held the clothes close to her chest, turned around, and bumped the open drawer closed with her hip. She waggled her hand at him and, with her nose up in the air, said, “Now be a gen-teal man and face away from me.” Sarcasm dripped from her voice.

Marco turned around.

“Thank you. One wouldn’t want one to get any inappropriate ideas, would one?”

“Too late for that,” he muttered

“Did you say something?” she asked, still sounding snooty.

“I said,” said Marco, raising his voice so she could hear him, “that it’s too late for that. For ideas, I mean.”

She didn’t answer and this unnerved him. She always had a quick response for everyone. Nothing seemed to catch her off-guard. She was either always prepared or just too cool to care. He hadn’t experienced this much silence around Janna since they were little kids. And he got her. He flustered her. He did to her what she always does to him.

Why did he feel so bad about it?

“You still there?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice muffled, “I’m here.”

“I– I shou– I wanted to–,” he stuttered.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But I didn’t want to make you feel–.”

“You didn’t. It’s kind of flattering. I never thought that you…” Her voice drifted off.

“Hey, I’m not a eunuch.”

“Yeah, but you’re, you know, Marco.”

He sighed, “The 'safe kid.’”

“That’s not what I mean. I’ve known you almost all my life. You’re like my brother. Except, better than my actual brothers.”

He smiled.

"You can turn around now.”

There she stood, her clothes bunched together in a messy pile at her feet. He watched the beany land and stared at the pile and tried not to think anything.

“Marco?”

He slowly – too slowly? – raised his eyes. He saw her legs every day because she wore skirts, but something seemed different. Just a little bit of green shorts showed under the gray shirt, which was too big for her. His stomach and heart lurched a little. His cheeks flushed. He didn’t feel ready for any of the thoughts in his head, but they were there. His eyes continued their journey up. That’s when he saw which shirt she had picked.

And it was the photo shirt. The one he bought at KarateKon. The one that says “I Kissed a Ninja.” The one with the picture of him kissing a ninja. His mind went blank. His cheeks burned.

“Santa Maria,” he whispered, “me da la fuerza para sobrevivir esta prueba.”

It was times like these that he wished he were more like Star. She could handle anything. Marco could handle many things – including, but not limited to, monster attacks, flying horse heads, hungry saber-toothed cats, pirates with planks, Tom – but not everything. One of the big things he couldn’t handle was when he confirmed to the rest of the multi-verse just how uncool he really was. When it happened, it hurt. Wounded him deeply. He got embarrassed, flush, and angry with himself and everything he thought everyone was thinking. When it was over and he was alone, he got embarrassed and angry again. This time at himself because he knew – HE KNEW! – that it shouldn’t matter to him. But it did matter.

At home alone, or with Star, it was so easy to just be Marco Diaz. To watch cheesy movies. To work on his line of Princess Marco dolls. To dance in his room only wearing underwear. It was all fun and made him feel good. And that was all that mattered.

But out in the real world, fun isn’t what mattered. Being like everyone else mattered. It mattered so much to be thought to be like everyone else because when you’re like everyone else, everyone else might like you or at least leave you alone.

His stomach hurt. Thoughts like these always made it hurt. Only time and distraction were the cures.

“Did you really kiss a ninja?” Janna asked, pulling the shirt out so she could see the picture better.

“Yeah. Why?”

“That is so cool.”

“Really?”

“Totally!” She smiled at him.

He didn’t understand how a shirt that had a picture of him kissing a ninja under the words saying that he kissed a ninja could ever be considered cool. And, although he still felt embarrassed, it didn’t feel the same. It felt, warmer? Safer? Comfortable? Was that a thing? A comfortable embarrassment?

He smiled back.

“There’s an extra pillow under the bed,” he said. “I’ll go get you a sleeping bag.”

Janna’s face flushed, “I thought we could…” She looked at the bed.

“Sure,” he said, not wanting to argue. “Just grab the pillow and turn off the light, please.”

Marco went to his bed and threw back the covers. He scooted as far as he could in a twin bed to make sure she had enough room to be comfortable. As he settled into his bed, the overhead light turned off.

“Hey!” he said, as a pillow hit him in the face.

Janna laughed as she hopped into bed.

He handed her the pillow and pulled the covers over them. She adjusted her body, settling herself into the bed. With both under the covers, on their backs, staring at the ceiling, he reached out and turned out the light on his night stand. A dim light from the neighbor’s back yard came though his window. Just enough that he could make out the beams in the ceiling. 

He listened to her breath for a minute then asked, “Janna, why are you here tonight?”

There was an eternity of silence before she said, “Do you remember when I used to sleep over and there were some nights when I couldn’t fall asleep and you’d invite me to sleep next to you?”

He remembered. There were nights where her breathing was ragged. Sometimes there was even quiet sobbing. On those nights he would get out of bed, take her hand, and bring her back to bed with him, without saying a word. He’d listen to her uneven breath grow smoother, until it became regular and she was asleep. The whole time, he held her hand.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I…” her voice cracked. She cleared her throat.

The beams in the ceiling became blurry as Marco’s eyes grew watery. He slid his hand under the covers and took hers in his.


End file.
